One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

In
“Curse of Cousin Smith,” Jeremiah Smith (Henry Jones) -- citizen of the
universe and cousin to Dr. Zachary Smith (Jonathan Harris) -- lands on the
Robinsons’ planet in search of his long-lost relative.

It
turns out, the two men have been competing for years to be the last surviving
family member so as to inherit the considerable Smith family fortune.

Now,
Jeremiah thinks he has discovered a way to exploit Dr. Smith’s avarice.

Working
with his space gangster friend, Little Joe, he has a “Friendly Universal
Gambling Machine” transported to the planet.

Dr. Smith, who can’t resist gambling, will not be able to pay his debts
after losing big time at the cosmic slot machine, and the machine will kill him, thus
leaving Jeremiah the heir to the estate.

Fortunately,
John Robinson (Guy Williams) has other plans.

Oy.

“Curse
of Cousin Smith” is a terrible episode of Lost in Space (1965-1968). I thought last week’s show, “The Thief from
Outer Space” was terribly weak, but it had nothing on this installment of the series.

Why
is “Curse of Cousin Smith” so awful?

First and foremost, the creators of this series seem to have forgotten
the title and premise of their own program.
Here, without difficulty or delay, Jeremiah Smith finds the Robinsons
and his cousin on a distant world. He
says he "heard" that there were Earth people there.

So apparently the Robinsons' presence on the planet is common knowledge.

But how did Dr. Smith’s cousin get to deep space in the first place?

As the series premiere, “The Reluctant
Stowaway” explains, the Robinsons are the first Earth people to attempt to reach
another solar system. The family makes that
journey in a state-of-the-art spaceship, and, so far as we know, no other ships
like the Jupiter 2 have been constructed. The
Robinsons have now been in space (or stranded on various planets) for perhaps
two years.

So
how does Jeremiah Smith have a history in space, and friendships with the likes
of space gangsters? When did he launch into space?

If -- since the Robinsons’ departure -- Earth has made some
technological breakthrough that permits casual and pervasive space travel, why
has no one from Alpha Control attempted to find and rescue the family?

We know from this episode that the family,
apparently, is easy to find, since Jeremiah not only knows there are humans on
this world, but the particular human he is looking for, his cousin.

You
can’t really be “lost in space” if everybody can find you, and travel to your
location, right?

Beyond
a faulty premise, “Curse of Cousin Smith” doesn’t remember anything about Dr.
Smith’s background. He is introduced in “The
Reluctant Stowaway” as a foreign saboteur, an agent in the service of a foreign
country. His mission is to prevent America from launching the Jupiter 2 and
winning the space race.

Well,
come “Curse of Cousin Smith,” we find out that Smith’s cousin is a Southern
Fried gentleman, right down to the accent and bolo tie. How exactly can we explain that Smith is an
agent for a foreign power while his cousin is from the South, in North
America?

Even
in terms of dialogue, “Curse of Cousin Smith” is on shaky ground. Will (Bill Mumy) explicitly notes in the
episode that Dr. Smith “never mentioned any of his relatives to me.”

That’s
not strictly true. The first season
episode “The Ghost in Space” revolves around a bog monster on Priplanus, whom
Dr. Smith believes is his dead relative, Thaddeus Smith. He believes he is being haunted by Thaddeus,
and takes Will on an adventure based on that very premise.

Also,
in terms of continuity, note that the Robinsons have no problem, this week,
believing in cosmic space gangsters and casino machines, where last week they
ribbed Will about his unbelievable story of a space thief (Malachi Throne).

Basically,
everything about this episode is a mess, and the stupidity of the narrative is
astounding. I suppose the viewer is to assume that Jeremiah hitches a ride off
the planet on the next outgoing spaceship, but doesn’t bother to take along the
Robinsons, or help them escape their marooning. It's the Gilligan's Island syndrome all over again.

Still,
there’s an intriguing insight in this episode.
Maureen (June Lockhart) politely tells Jeremiah that Dr. Smith is just
going through one of his “difficult periods.”

The fact that this comment comes from the family matriarch is important.
It sounds very much like she is a Mom describing her naughty child, or teenager. Understand that fact, and you get a key to
understanding Dr. Smith and the way the writers/creators of the series use him. He is not bad, he’s just a naughty kid going
through a bad phase.

Finally, I will say I like the fanciful nature of the tech in this episode. The gambling machine is kind of neat in a fantastic, whimsical way, and I love the moment where it goes mobile, chasing Jeremiah and Dr. Smith through the desert, firing its lasers.

5 comments:

John,We know of at least one other person from Earth who is lost in space: Jimmy Hapgood, who was sent to Saturn by Alpha Control. We'll meet others, implying that the space program extends beyond the Robinsons. But you are right; the Robinsons are the first family to be sent into deep space.I'm splitting hairs because I got nothin' to say about this episode. This was one of the ones you did not talk to your friends about on the playground.At least Barney Slater will make amends in three weeks, but for this one he was off his game.Interested in hearing your comments regarding the next couple of entries.Steve

I get the impression that the writers on the later Lost In Space stories were the sort of people who aren't too familiar with science fiction, don't like it and think that it's all silly stuff that doesn't have to have any relationship to reality or even make any sort of sense. They seemed to have a certain level of contempt for their own show and it's audience. Even if you're going for a deliberately surreal or absurdist world it has to have some sort of internal coherence and the later episodes of this show just don't have that.

Remember the bit in "Sleeper" where the scientists theorize that the worst criminals in our society were forced to watch Howard Kosell as punishment? Were the film to be remade, Kosell would be replaced with Season 2 of Lost in Space.

A bit late to comment as I only watched this yesterday, but a quick note: I didn't think Smith was ever meant or said to be anything else than American? Certainly the "dark" Smith of the first episodes was hampering the US space programme, but I assumed he was a traitor who worked for foreign powers simply because of the lucre.

Of course it's a terrible episode, but strangely enough, I enjoyed it. The hole into which "Cuz" Jeremiah fell brought a smile out of me, plus the fact that Smith proper was off-scene so much of the episode only to be replaced by an even more obnoxious character actually made me miss him.

I've stopped expecting more than mindless entertainment out of Lost in Space. And it's one-upmanship in being even more mindless every week has become, in a curious way, intriguing to watch, as even the strangest sitcoms would fear to tread its territory.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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